The Comintern’s Negro program was political opportunism rationalized after the fact.

Evidence

The policy implications of this passage fit quite well into the rationalizations found in “Left-Wing” Communism. This is, perhaps, another sort of proof that the policy was a gloss on the history of Black movements and not the independent product of the Soviet Union’s political elite. Like formulations on other national liberation struggles one discovers in Comintern declarations, it was political opportunism searching for theoretical justifications. It thus represented the critical importance to the Soviet Party of forming alliances with movements that were emerging from theoretically “precapitalist” societies. Given historical necessity, Marxist-Leninism compromised itself theoretically with nationalism, and as such institutionalized the force that had brought the Second International to its submission. It might be said in the most simple-minded reading of the dialectic, that the Third International was a synthesis of the thesis (socialism) and anti-thesis (national chauvinism) of the Second. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1066

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to the Second International’s collapse over nationalism, relevant to the reader’s broader arc of the radical tradition.

Related

• Comintern policy on Black self-determination was political opportunism seeking theoretical cover (similarity 0.88)
• Marxist-Leninism compromised with nationalism for alliance-building. (similarity 0.85)
• Lenin personally drove the Comintern’s recruitment of American Blacks (similarity 0.81)
• The 1922 Comintern thesis pledged support to every Negro movement undermining capitalism (similarity 0.81)
• Stalin supplied the Comintern’s flawed theoretical basis for treating Blacks as a nation. (similarity 0.81)
• The Comintern adopted self-determination to pre-empt a resurgence of Black nationalism. (similarity 0.81)
• The Comintern’s Negro Theses marked a theoretical advance over Garvey’s UNIA internationalism (similarity 0.81)
• The Third International subordinated member parties to Soviet interests (similarity 0.80)
• Nationalism defeated the Second International yet enabled the Third International. (similarity 0.80)
• Comintern adopted Black self-determination only in 1928 amid immigrant-worker politics (similarity 0.80)
• Lenin’s rejection of left opportunism was a tactical retreat amid revolutionary defeats (similarity 0.79)
• Comintern officials dismissed Black nationalism and separatism as failed movements (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Padmore saw the Comintern’s about-face as a betrayal of black people. #corroborates (0.60) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2377